Desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in various industrial processes requires viable carbon dioxide mitigation strategies. Capture of the carbon dioxide depends on ability to separate the carbon dioxide from a mixture. Separation of the carbon dioxide from the mixture enables transport of the carbon dioxide and subsequent handling or sequestering of the carbon dioxide.
Absorption processes utilize a sorbent to remove the carbon dioxide from the mixture followed by regeneration of the sorbent to liberate the carbon dioxide. The regeneration relies on heating of the sorbent to a temperature at which the carbon dioxide desorbs from the sorbent. Separation of the sorbent from the carbon dioxide released from the sorbent thereby isolates the carbon dioxide.
The regeneration of the sorbent thus contributes to costs and energy requirements associated with such carbon dioxide recovery. Previous energy intense and inefficient approaches for the regeneration utilize steam to transfer heat to the solvent. Factors such as equipment size, operating expense and capital expense contribute to making these past desorption units undesirable.
Therefore, a need exists for methods of desorbing gases from sorbent fluids to regenerate the sorbent fluids used in recovering the gases.